US visitor and a WEDDING!

December 13, 2007

Oh man, well much has gone on that I’m sure would be fun to tell in the past few days, but I’m not sure that I’ll be able to remember it all. Lets see… Tuesday, the 11th, I had to leave the house early in the morning to write a letter soliciting the mayor to help us with the salaries of the health promoter and the nutrition counselor in the town. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but the only medical program for my community is leaving and we’ve secured everything except for their living salaries this coming year. These salaries are what we are trying to get the municipality to help out with.

Our mean faces...Bryan and I

After that, I had to walk back to the house and change and then walk to the pueblo to meet with the scholarship committee. Apparently, the professor from Louisiana and his son were going to be there, and then afterwards, I was going to take the son for a few days to stay with me. What I didn’t expect, was that I would be translating the whole time. It was scary at first, but when I realized I could do it, it was awesome. Present was my Peace Corps Program Director, the principal of the San Pedro school, two secretaries, and then the professor and his son, and Rolando (PCD) tells me, ok you are going to translate for the committee to English and for the professor into Spanish. HA…and Rolando speaks pretty good English so I couldn’t make it up….. har har. It was fun though, I actually got a kick out it, although you always have to be careful on the whole power trip thing in a situation like that. Oh yeah, forgot to say that the meeting was to introduce me as the new committee member, to meet with the gringos who run the State side part of the scholarship fundraising program, and to discuss the fact that the government is now going to actually pay for the price to go to high school. Which by the way = awesome. Now the scholarship money will go to buy uniforms, books…pencils…folders etc, transportation to and fro, internet in the school, medicines, and hopefully a few trips a year to places around the small country to gain hands on experience. It’s a great cause I think. In addition, through this program called Joya Grande, that Louisianans are reps of, there are going to be quite a few university scholarships coming out of it in the next few years. Its awesome stuff, and here’s my plug for it:

*Were anyone to still want to do end of the year donations that are TAX WRITE-OFFS, feel free to check out the scholarship website on the side of this page, and call Tony Gasbarro who is an ex El Sal PC volunteer and part of Project Salvador Scholarship Fund. All donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE from the US. Just be sure to tell him it’s for San Pedro Nonualco*

Anyways, that was cool, and afterwards we got lunch with Rolando the folks from the Bayou.

After, Rolando and Dr. Thomas took us back to my house, where we gave some clothes to the twins next door that they had brought, and then after checking out my abode, they took off and Harrison and I chillaxed.

The Scholarship Committee

Harrison is a sophomore at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette(sp?) and is studying civil engineering, so we had some good conversations about contour mapping and satellite imagery and stuff like that. Apparently he world with a company in the summer that does that kind of stuff too with light frequencies. Anyways, he’s a cool kid with a good heart, he brought me reese’s and other kids candy. (we arranged the reese’s before hand)

We hung out, visited previous peace corps projs, took a trip to the Bruja, and small waterfall and watering hole where we swam some with my host fam’s kids. The last one was really fun, there were some good pics and videos.

La Bruja, the pool and little waterfall

The Chicos

So this felt higher than it really was I guess, the climb along the wall was fun though.

We ate dinner at two different houses and I tried to cook some different El Salvadoran meals both mornings to give him different tastes of the country. Also, Aaron left me a sweet automatic blow up mattress for company….much love Aaron, much love.

Today, we visited some more stuff and then we walked back to town to meet with some scholarship students to talk. Classic El Salvadoran situation follows….. the lady who called me that morning to make sure I was coming to the meeting with the four scholarships students that the visitors wanted interviewed, never showed, so I had to entertain them with Harrison for an hour. They were over ecstatic about the scholarship thing, and were really nice to Harrison in appreciation. Apparently their daughter is really smart, but wasn’t going to go to high school because they couldn’t afford to send her to town for the schooling. She had apparently won a speech competition making it all the way up the nationals where she placed second, but wasn’t going to go to high school do to money. So that was my first hands on experience to what good this program is doing for the country because that would have been a shame.

At 2pm, I told them we were done, and that we had to go to San Sal to take Harrison back, and that I guessed no one else was coming. We took a family photo for the donors and got her thank you letter, and then I called the lady to tell her we were leaving, when she informed me that she wasn’t going to make it anyways lol. Crazy people and the other lady wasn’t coming back til Friday, hahaha. Oh well, we caught a pickup that was going to the capital and he made it to his hotel on time. I stopped by the PC office and dropped off another 3 dolla, because someone has sent me another package to THAT address, and they want to get it out. Hopefully I can go get it next week and see who its from. PLEASE send any packages to my new address here in San Pedro from now on……or I will send my minions to find you.

I ran into the older couple at the capital office today, apparently they are heading back to the States for good tomorrow. They wife, Sherry, her mom is 95 and apparently has taken a turn for the worst and needs people to take care of her, and the fam has called them back soooooo, sad, they seemed really down….obviously. Mike said he didn’t find out until later that he might could have stayed. That makes our original group of 29 go down to 26.

Tomorrow I have to go to the CBI graduation, its like a kinder/daycare project they got going here by my house. I am the official photographer for the event haha. That’s kind of a way Aaron raised money for the school or ADESCO, was by selling 4x6 photos for a dollar here. So, I guess I’ll continue the cause.

Me and the local crazy thuggin it at my casa, he's a story for later

I have found that powdered milk is good as long as its being cooked or in cereal, no good drinking. This is good because I can keep milk (powder) on hand now.
Also, apparently I’m a camel and don’t drink enough…..or at least that’s what I was told.

Inferno me:

“‘Now you must cast aside your laziness,’ my master said, ‘for he who rests on down or under covers cannot come to fame; and he who spends his life without renown leaves such a vestige of himself on earth as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.’
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness with spirit that can win all battles if the body’s heaviness does not deter it.’”

December 16, 2007

The dance at the Kinder grad

Ha, I just noticed that I forgot to put the last entry on the blog last time I was on. That means that the next post is going to be really long. Or I could just leave out all the small stories, that sounds like more fun. So yeah, today is Sunday, but Friday we had the kinder graduation and it went really well. I didn’t have the chance to get by to read to the kids before some of them have graduated, but all the kids still know my name, and want to know when Don Aaron is coming back haha. It was nice, I took lots of photos, and hopefully I can get that system of raising funds for the ADESCO that way. Although, the promotoras of the CBI came (they from a group that gets its money from UNICEF) and the one like 40 year old lady though I was Spanish at first and kept telling me that she wanted to marry a Spaniard the whole time. Not til the end did I put together that I was that Spaniard, and then I was like… naaa I’m a gringo. Then she told me she wanted to marry a gringo, all the ladies got a kick out of it. That sat around afterwards the whole time flirting. Crazy girls.

Kids at the graduation.

I helped half the day Saturday prepare for the wedding on Sunday by doing random things around Don Raul’s house and cutting banana tree leaves for tamales, and getting up early to make chocolate from their cacao tree, that was fun. I’ve been drinking chocolate all weekend. That afternoon I ran to the town for internet and Mass. Still trying to learn that whole Our Father, Credo, and other Catholic parts of the Mass through my missal, but its taking time.
Grrrr.

Sunday, up again at 530 to bring chairs from the casa comunal and to finish last minute stuff.

Which, speaking of last minute, this place cracks me up. The only thing that I’ve found that actually starts at the time posted here, is Mass. The wedding Mass was set for during the 9am normal Mass for the town. We were supposed to leave at 8 from the house, we left at 830, and then the pickup that a friend had brought to bring the groom and the bride’s fam (us) broke down a few yards on the way. We started walking, they got picked up and ended up getting to the church (with the groom) about 8 minutes before it started. HA….imagine arriving to the church 8 minutes before your wedding. Cracked me up, but it all worked out. I was charged with taking photos with my camera, mainly because the only other one there of the Godfather, broke.

The fam entering the church

Speaking of differences, I’ve noticed a few in the wedding hoorah. Here, as I think is the case in a lot of older cultures, the man’s family has to pay for everything, even the bride’s dress I believe. Of course, I’m sure that the Lopezs helped out in some way, but they couldn’t believe that we put it all on the woman’s family (well I told them except for the rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner, but they don’t have that, so…haha). Also, the Godparents play a huge role here. The parents of the bride accompany her through the streets to the church, but then she is sat by her family once within the church with the Godparents, who are the ones that participate in and throughout the marriage parts of the Mass. I guess that’s because the godparents are charged with the spiritual growth of the kids as well, so in all the major spiritual church events during their lives here, the godparents are the main players.

After Communion

After the wedding the with Padre Tino and Godparents

After getting back to La Comunidad for the reception, things went somewhat smoothly, everyone wanted to see the gringo dance, I got to sit at the table of honor, all the jazz. It was fun. Although they don’t like to switch dance partners all the time like us gringos while on the dance floor, I could never get away from the one I went on the “floor” = harder dirt, with. Oh well. Its all good.

Still in a lull on Dante, been really busy lately. Tomorrow it continues with a meeting with our 32 scholarship recipients in the town early, but Tuesday, I hope to be able to take it easy.

“By a tradition handed down from the apostles, which took its origin from the very day of Christ’s resurrection, the Church celebrates the pascal mystery every seventh day, which day is appropriately called the Lord’s Day or Sunday”

Vatican II